Wilkes-Barre :In the News

Works by Mark Cohen, a longtime Wilkes-Barre resident and street photographer, are on display at the Danziger Gallery in Manhattan. The New York Times looks back at Cohen's love affair with his hometown.

After 40 wonderful years, Mark Cohen has abruptly ended his relationship with his muse. It might seem like cold betrayal, but it’s really more complicated than that.

His muse isn’t a woman. It’s Wilkes-Barre, his Pennsylvania hometown, where he has been making stark street photographs since the 1970s. Last year Mr. Cohen, 71, moved to Philadelphia and into an apartment more manageable than the house where he raised his children and had his commercial studio.

His old romance was a black-and-white affair, literally, and he is showing some of those gritty images from the 1970s and 1980s at the Danziger Gallery in Manhattan. But this time he has included many lesser-known color photographs from the same era.

Original source:The New York Times
Read the complete story (and check out some images) here.

Lehigh Valley has been named one of the top spots for economic development in the country.

With 46 projects, the Lehigh Valley ties for second place with Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for new and expanded corporate facilities in 2013 in areas with a population between 200,000 and one million people.

"This makes me feel good as a lifelong resident of the Lehigh Valley," said Don Cunningham, president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation.

"This is not some sort of subjective, who can market themselves better type of ranking, it's based on results," he said. "It's nice to see it occurring and the national market recognizing the significance of the Lehigh Valley."

The Omaha, Nebraska, area ranked number one with 48 projects. Some of the projects that helped land the Lehigh Valley on the list include Coca-Cola, Bimbo Bakeries and Kraft. While this is the sixth consecutive year this region has been in the top 10, the number two spot is its highest ranking yet.

The New York Times reports on New York Yankees' captain Derek Jeter and his rehab assignment for the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders.

Derek Jeter was here once before, at this diamond nestled in a mountainside in the coal region of northeast Pennsylvania. He batted second in the 1995 Class AAA All-Star Game, in a lineup with Jeromy Burnitz, Luis Lopez and others who long ago faded from the stage.

YahooSports carries a NASCAR.com report on Pocono Raceway's recent Green campaign, which is setting the bar high for other NASCAR tracks.

While the entire NASCAR industry has spent the past month showcasing and stepping up its commitment to the sport's Race to Green initiative, Pocono Raceway has been a factor for years -- an example of what's possible not only for other NASCAR facilities, but also for any sports franchise or facility.

From a one-of-a-kind, on-site solar farm to a goal of 100 percent sustainability to an E-waste recycling event, compost program and even a flock of sheep herding on property, Pocono Raceway has been first among sports facilities to NASCAR Green's checkered flag.

A New York Times writer brings his family to Lehigh Gorge State Park in Jim Thorpe, and with the help of Pocono Biking, enjoys local landmnarks like Picture Rock and Mud Run Creek.

Within minutes of being dropped off with perhaps 20 other passengers, we were on the trail, the Lehigh River far below on our left, and a steep, wooded hill dotted with waterfalls to our right. The trail is wide and well maintained, a gravel surface under a canopy of trees, with mile markers to chart progress, picnic tables and signs noting points of interest and giving a bit of history.

Paste spotlights 11 musical acts, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to Wilkes-Barre, and spanning a variety of genres.

The long stretch of Pennsylvania turnpike that takes you from Philly to Pittsburgh may be one of the most unexciting rides you’ll experience. But these two cities -- as well as spots in between like Harrisburg or Lancaster -- have no shortage of new, exciting bands to discover. Pennsylvania has it all: hip-hoppers, hard rockers, front-porch-folk rockers, indie rockers, dream weavers, power poppers, EDM’ers, and singers/songwriters galore.

The Atlantic reports on a government study showing that Pennsylvania is the state with the fourth-highest number of green jobs, and about 3 percent of all jobs in the commonwealth can be considered green.

The report defines green jobs across five categories: production of energy from renewable sources; energy efficiency; pollution reduction and removal, greenhouse gas reduction, and recycling and reuse; natural resources conservation; and environmental compliance, education and training, and public awareness.

The majority of these green jobs (2.3 million) come from the private sector. The public sector employed about 860,000 people. The largest sector of employment was manufacturing, with more than 450,000 green jobs.

This squares with a July 2011 Brooking Institution study of clean economy jobs, which identified 2.7 million clean economy jobs across the United States. The report found that median wages for clean economy jobs are 13 percent higher than median U.S. wages, and that a disproportionate share of clean economy jobs are staffed by workers with relatively little formal education. This has created a sizable group of "moderately well-paying green collar occupations," according to the report.

A study of conducted by researchers at several universities, including Bloomsburg, shows the presence of nature has declined in children's picture books over time, USA Today reports.

Co-author Chris Podeschi of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania says: "This is just one sample of children's books, but it suggests there may be a move away from the natural world as the population is increasingly isolated from these settings. This could translate into less concern about the environment."

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, says this study and others suggest "a physical disassociation with the natural world. … Nature experience isn't a panacea, but it does help children and the rest of us on many levels of health and cognition. I believe that as parents learn more about the disconnect, they'll want to seek more of that experience for their children, including the joy and wonder that nature has traditionally contributed to children's literature."

The Neighbor News-Boonton reports on a weather balloon that launched from a high school near Wilkes-Barre and landed 80 miles away in New Jersey.

(Tony) Fleury teaches earth and space science at the Nanticoke High School near Wilkes-Barre, PA. His ninth-grade class put this experiment together for less than $200 for the components: smart phone for GPS tracking, camera, temperature sensor, plastic foam box, red parachute and helium balloon.

The 12th-grade physics class assisted the freshmen class with engineering.

The sensor had recorded a temperature as low as minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The camera automatically took photographs every 20 seconds through a hole in the box throughout the flight. There were photographs of the sky, the horizon, and of Sunset and Crystal Lakes just before landing.

In northeastern Pennsylvania, like areas around the country, many customers prefer community banks to national banks, The Times-Tribune reports.

The nation's economic woes trace their roots to the financial sector. Banks and investment houses have been pilloried in popular consciousness. But community bankers are not the cigar-smoking moneybags demonized by Occupy Wall Street protesters, said Wilson Smith, bank equities analyst for Philadelphia-based Patriot Capital Partners.

"When you look at your community bankers, they are showing up to work to meet the financial needs of the community. They are not making swaps and derivative trades or trading for their own account," Mr. Smith said. "They are at the Rotary meetings, they are part of the community."

Landmark (Community Bank) itself was formed as a reaction to bank mergers and acquisitions that swept through the area 10 years ago. When local businesses found the transition rough and service undesirable, they provided capital to start a new bank, or a de novo bank, as new banking companies are called in the industry.

The Associated Press reports on Honest Appalachia, a newly launched website set up to accept leaked government and corporate documents from several states, including Pennsylvania.

The region also was selected, (co-founder Jim) Tobias said, because of its relatively rural area, believing there was less media scrutiny in the region and that a resource like Honest Appalachia would be particularly valuable.

Many newsrooms have shut down and many journalists have lost their jobs, Tobias says, increasing the chances that corruption and misconduct will go unchecked. And many whistleblowers are skeptical of sharing their information with mainstream media.

"We believe our country desperately needs watchdogs at the local, state and regional level," Tobias said.

Seventeen service plazas along the Pennsylvania Turnpike are slated to have EV charging stations for electric cars by summer, 2013, reports AutoBlog.

Each plaza will get one Level 2 charging stations and two DC fast chargers, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Kevin Sunday told Essential Public Radio. The first stations will be put in in the spring of 2012.

Florida's Car Charging Group was awarded a grant worth a million dollars from the PDEP to install the Chargepoint charging stations made by Coulomb Technologies that look similar to this. On top of the million, the Turnpike Commission will spend up to $500,000 to upgrade the electricity infrastructure at the plazas "to provide the charging stations with the necessary voltage.

The information technology job market is on the rise in the Wilkes-Barre and Scranton areas, The Citizens' Voice reports.

"There's a pretty broad and extensive network of IT people around here," said Chris Haran, chief information officer at TMG Health Inc., a medical billing, management and business services company that employs 950 people in the area. TMG's local IT staff has expanded to 140 from 110 last spring.

For eight years before joining TMG about six months ago, Haran headed the Northeastern Pennsylvania Technology Institute and the Great Valley Technology Center, which promote technology-based economic development and high-skill employment.

"Our goal was to create technology employment in the area and maybe we are seeing the fruits of it," Haran said. "A lot of firms are starting to recognize technology is important to their business."

FesslerUSA's ability to produce its own fabric is one aspect that sets it apart from other apparel manufacturers remaining in the United States. "We made a decision very early on to be different from everyone else by being vertical and having fabric production. That's been key to our success and our ability to get through the economic downturn," said (CEO) Walter Meck.

A custom software program drives the entire manufacturing process. The company does all of its design services, knitting, cutting, sewing, folding, packing and final processing in-house. Dyeing and finishing is done by a local dyer with whom the company has done business for more than 40 years.